Being a celebrity doesn't have an iota of value when you're looking death in the eye.
— Hill Harper
My undergraduate studies at Brown and graduate degrees from Harvard prepared me for a multifaceted career as an actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
We all have different timetables in reaching and realizing that being in healthy partnership is better than being on our own.
You can't build anything with a flimsy foundation. Friendship is the foundation.
I'm not telling anyone, 'Quit your job and be homeless to go for your dream.'
What's interesting is with a lot of the work I do through my foundation, the 'Manifest Your Destiny' foundation, we really encourage people, and we attempt to empower, uplift and inspire people to live out their dreams, live out their destiny.
Men and women can absolutely be friends, and that's what we need to be. Part of the problem is that we aren't friends enough. Our relationships are negotiations, and that is not friendship.
Change happens from the bottom up - all of us as individuals deciding that we will and we do have an impact.
The most impactful place that I've been to where I was just completely awestruck, happy, moved is Victoria Falls between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is probably the most beautiful and romantic place in the world.
We all have choices we have to make, and with those choices come certain sacrifices.
If you can't get excited about living life, then what are you doing?
In acting class, teachers talk about how the 'givens' of a situation help define a character.
It's heartening when people hear for the first time that their vote really matters.
We all have inherited so many types of fears, whether they're race-based, culture-based, gender-based, age-based, family-based. And then we get comfortable with these fears.
Whenever there's an opportunity to celebrate the written word and celebrate the folks that read the written word, and, I think, to encourage other writers to write and encourage folks to read more and get connected to it in a personal way, it's a positive thing.
We're living in a time, unfortunately, where, you know, a lot of young men, particularly young men of color, being raised by single mothers. And their mothers so desperately want to connect with them, but I found, in talking with a lot of young men, that sometimes it's difficult.
I say 'date potential.' The reason why is no matter who you date, anyway, five years from now, you're going to be different, and he's going to be different. The key is to really find somebody that you can grow with that you can change with, evolve with and that you can be partners with.
At the end of a down day on Wall Street, we all need to be able to sleep peacefully at night. That comfort won't come from our bank balance.
Part of getting other people to focus on the future rather than being myopically focused on the present is about living that way yourself and showing that you can make choices today that are about future outcomes and still be having a great time into the present and enjoying your life.
Even when you're out with someone, you need to get out of your head. And you can try exercises by putting yourself in situations where you may not feel completely comfortable, like going to a gallery opening on your own.
There's nothing wrong with wanting a partner and doing the things to have one. To protect ourselves, we have to say, 'I don't need one.'
You never know what's going on in someone's life. You never know what's really going on behind what they present.
The real important things are kindness and a sense of humor. I've been fortunate to have dated and could have easily married women who have those qualities, and time and circumstances didn't work out. Timing plays a big part.
I've gotten a firsthand view at the destruction that black men and black women not being able to stay and build healthy relationships has had on the black family and black children.
My favorite vacation spot is a beautiful beach. I've been to many, many beaches on many continents: Mombasa, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, Mexico and the U.S. What's beautiful about beach communities is for whatever reason, they feel like vacation to me.
Certainly, those of us in the entertainment industry, we are part of creating fear in people - 'fear' for me stands for 'false evidence appearing real.' We create fantasy, and in certain ways that's wonderful because it allows people to escape. But it can suck people into wanting to achieve something that isn't real.
All work and no play make any forensic pathologist a dull boy.
No matter how bad something gets, no matter where you come from, you can achieve anything. I really do believe that.
My father passed from cancer in 2000; his brother died of cancer before that. My grandfather died of cancer.
People are afraid of an unorganized, wasteful government.
People always think about what prison is. What prison really is - it's not a physical challenge, it's mental.
I'm really proud of the characters I've been able to play. Certainly, playing the character on 'CSI' as Dr. Sherman Hawkes is a wonderful stereotype-busting role.
Once you have a felony conviction on your record, one of the most difficult things to do is to break the cycle of recidivism.
Intimacy can be about holding someone's hand. It could be about stroking their hair.
I've made money in real estate, hotel, and restaurant investments.
Part of the problem in today's world is that many men are taught that they have to 'make it' before they should even consider committed to a healthy partnership.
I will not reach my full potential as a man unless I find my partner.
I've read a number of relationship books out there. A lot are written towards women.
The longer you hold a dollar, the longer you hold money, the more valuable it becomes over time. So the younger you are, the more ability you have to hold money longer term.
There will always be crazy things that happen in our lives, but love is the central connector. If we commit to love and partnership, the other stuff doesn't matter.
My father, obviously, and my mother were inspirations. My uncle, Frank Harper, he was an absolute mentor for me.
I love being athletic and doing things that are active, even when I'm traveling.
The wealth cure is looking at your life step by step - making a diagnosis and saying, 'Am I using money or is money using me?'
My friend is a former race car driver, so he races for Mercedes, and I root for him. I have a car that I love to race, I'll take it to the track.
My first two books, 'Letters to a Young Brother' and 'Letters to a Young Sister,' were... distributed pretty widely. Judges in juvenile justice facilities started citing the book as required reading.
Voting is an individual, personal thing.
It's important for someone like me - who's known Obama for 20 years - to speak the truth. I know him to be a Christian man. I know him to be one of the greatest patriots.
For me, self-esteem-building and confidence-building is the foundation for anything that we do, whether you want to be a writer, a painter, or a entrepreneur.
With my first book, 'A Letter to a Young Brother,' I figured it would be my only book I was ever going to write. What happened with that is a lot of young men would reach out to me.
What I've found in doing research is that men want a relationship that feels fun. In other words, they want a relationship that has qualities or elements of their same-sex relationships - just like women do, too.
